Chapter 45

Chapter 45. I Found the Legacy (1)

Creeeeak.

As the door to the hidden vault opened, we rushed inside.

And nearly fell straight through the floor.

"Aaah!"

In the center of the large stone chamber that looked like a vault, there was a huge hole running straight through from top to bottom.

Hanging from the edge of the hole I had nearly fallen into, I looked down and saw a darkness-filled shaft whose bottom could not be seen.

'Don’t tell me...?'

I looked up. There was a matching hole above as well. This time, however, I could see its end.

The ceiling of the stone chamber.

It was the very ceiling of the chamber we had fallen from.

"This can’t be real. Is this hole really the one we fell through?"

The Firebird Hunter was staring blankly at the hole and had not even thought to help me up.

The shock must have hit her hard.

"Ngh."

In the end, I had no choice but to pull myself up on my own.

Once I climbed back up and looked around, I could understand why she had been so shaken.

Almost nothing remained in the vault. I wondered whether there might be another door somewhere, but aside from the one we had entered through, there were no others to be seen.

Other than the door we came through, the only openings leading anywhere were the two huge holes above and below.

After standing there in a daze for a long while, she searched every corner of the remaining chamber, but all she found were a few dust-covered metal fragments and several gold coins.

"This can’t be...."

In the end, she sank to the floor in despair.

She had behaved so rationally all this time that I could tell just how disappointed she was from the way she looked now.

I was disappointed too, but some adventures did end in failure.

Besides, I had at least managed to refine my mana swordsmanship through this opportunity, so it did not feel as though I had come away with nothing.

I looked up.

When I gathered mana into my eyes, I could vaguely make out the ceiling through the distant dimness.

It looked to be at least fifty meters high.

It was tremendously high, but it was still far closer than climbing up from the underground cavern with the reservoir.

Rock climbing would have been impossible in my previous life, but with mana, it seemed I might somehow manage it.

"Then shall we head back?"

I muttered that to myself while searching for places to cling to on the ceiling, when suddenly a thought occurred to me.

'Wait a second. If there really were treasures here, and this place ended up with a hole through it....'

Then where had the treasures gone?

Of course, they might have been buried under the collapsing earth, or the monsters digging around might have carried them off, but if neither of those had happened?

I looked back down into the hole.

And just as I was about to shout to her—

"Wait, the treasure—"

KRAAAAH!

My voice never reached her ears.

The monsters’ screeches swallowed it whole.

"So there are still monsters left?"

Startled, I turned toward the open door, and beside me she rose to her feet with fury written across her face.

"They were still alive? Good!"

Good my foot, there’s nothing good about this!

Cursing inwardly, I gripped my sword.

I had found it odd that I had not received the message about passing the death point even after we wiped out all the monsters, but as expected, some had still remained.

And then, at last, the monsters appeared.

Boom!

A huge crimson monster shoved the heavy iron door aside as though smashing it open with its own body and entered the chamber.

Then a second, even larger monster followed behind it.

Their entire bodies were covered in red.

They had rat-like faces and four pairs of legs.

They looked similar to the monsters we had seen below, but these ones were far larger than the gray monsters.

'A different type?'

Their size was different, but so was the color of their fur.

Fur as red as flames.

Looking at that blazing red fur, I finally understood why these monsters were called Red Mice.

Then were these things the parents of the others? Was their original fur color red, only for it to turn gray from living down here underground?

Just as that thought crossed my mind, I heard the sound of teeth grinding beside me.

"So it was you, wasn’t it? Where did all the legacy go?"

Before I could say anything, she burst forward in blazing fury.

Grrrrrrrr.

She was not the only one enraged.

The red-furred monsters screeched in return and charged.

Clang! Claaang!

Human and monster collided in an instant.

Unlike the gray monsters from before, these creatures did not give way even an inch beneath her attacks.

Her wavering blade struck against their claws, yet the claws remained intact, and even when she finally managed to cut their bodies, the red fur absorbed most of the damage and left only shallow wounds.

"It’s not supposed to be this weak! This isn’t what this power should be! If only I’d been taught it properly!"

The more she fought, the more agitated she became, and the wilder her sword swings grew.

But these monsters were different. As long as she kept losing herself in emotion, there was no way she could beat them.

In the middle of the fight, her sword slashed foolishly through empty air, and a monster’s claws tore across her skin.

The Firebird Hunter was being driven steadily backward.

I let out a sigh.

If the thought that had just occurred to me was correct, then if she died, the treasure would all become mine....

Now that I could climb out on my own, and if she fought well enough, I might not even have to fight the monsters myself.

And yet—

"The monsters are too strong! Run while I hold them off!"

The moment I heard her voice as she fought the monsters with blood spraying from her wounds, I gave up on the thought of running.

There were plenty of villains in this world, but there were also plenty of good people—foolish suckers, even.

When someone was faced with death, you could see their true nature, and if that nature turned out to be kind, it was not easy at all to turn your back on them.

In the end, I raised my sword.

'If I die here, will these be the kind I can beat next time?'

Thinking that, I charged at the monsters.

Unfortunately, before I could truly join the fight, the Firebird Hunter went down, and I became the sole target of both monsters.

"Ghk, n-no!"

I heard her broken scream, and then I saw the claws filling my vision.

I closed my eyes.

Slice.

A violent pain.

The world went dark, then bright again.

The sound of wind beating against my ears, and clothes whipping all around me.

And the words floating before my eyes.

[You have died. Restarting from the autosave point.]

Life began again.

I opened my eyes.

The cave walls were flashing past.

By the faint light spilling from the Firebird Hunter’s lamp as we fell together, I was able to make out my surroundings.

The hidden vault where I had just died must have been up there somewhere above us.

We would hit the water in only a moment now.

Instead of throwing the sword away, I gripped it tightly.

Then I raised as much mana as I could and braced myself for the impact to come.

Splash!

In the very next instant, I plunged into the water with a great splash.

Cold water struck my whole body. I sank deeper and deeper.

It was because of the heavy sword.

The first time I fell, I had thrashed desperately to slow myself.

But this time, I hugged the sword to my chest and did not move.

With mana circulating through my body, breathing was not a concern.

They said that in my previous life, some divers could hold their breath for more than ten minutes, and right now, I felt as though I could easily do the same.

The light above my head flickered.

It seemed she was searching for me underwater.

The first time I fell, this was about when she would have grabbed me and taken me back to the surface.

This time, however, I had sunk too deep, and she could not find me.

I held my breath and kept descending.

It truly was a deep reservoir.

The light grew dimmer and dimmer, and when I was finally swallowed by the darkness, I began to feel afraid.

What if my thinking had been wrong? What if this reservoir connected somewhere else?

Just as the doubt struck me that perhaps I had died for nothing—

Tap.

My feet touched bottom.

An uneven floor.

Fortunately, I had reached it before it was too late.

'Damn it, I can’t see anything.'

It seemed I had made another mistake.

If a hole had opened in the hidden vault, then I assumed the treasures would have fallen through and ended up in this reservoir below. But with it this dark, there was no way to find anything.

Still, I could not simply go back up empty-handed.

Only because I had fallen from such a height had I sunk so quickly in the first place.

Unless I intended to die again and fall once more, I had to find something now.

As I was about to force more mana into my eyes and ears just in case, a thought suddenly occurred to me.

What if I spread mana outside my body?

This was not open air, but perhaps it would still work underwater.

Taking over the entire space with mana and freezing others in place would be impossible, but might I at least be able to sense the space as my own domain?

If pushing mana into a sword let me treat it like an extra limb, then perhaps pushing mana into the water would let me feel the space the mana spread through.

I drew the held breath back into my body and began releasing mana outward instead.

It felt strangely different from spreading it through air.

It was like pressing my body into thick, sticky jelly.

It was uncomfortable and slow, but in the end I was able to spread mana even underwater.

Two meters in all directions. That was the extent of the space my mana reached.

'That’s the earthen bottom, and that’s a rock....'

Fortunately, through the movement of mana, I could sense objects around me.

It felt like detecting foreign matter suspended in jelly.

The sensation was utterly unfamiliar, but even so, it allowed me to roughly perceive the objects around me.

I could not make out fine detail, but at least I no longer had to crawl along the bottom feeling for everything with my hands, which was more than enough help.

Slowly, I began walking along the floor of the reservoir.

Just as I had guessed, the bottom was in utter disarray.

Broken rocks were scattered everywhere, and I could feel stones that seemed to have been cut by human hands.

There was something that felt like a candlestick, and scraps of torn cloth fluttering in the water as well.

As I continued searching like that, my breath gradually began to grow tight.

Judging from the strain in my breathing, quite a bit of time seemed to have passed.

'Ah, right. The monsters are going to come out....'

Not long after emerging from the reservoir, I had fought the monsters.

Three in total. Of those, the Firebird Hunter had killed two.

'Will three be all right?'

I may have just dumped quite a burden on her....

It seemed I had no choice but to go back up.

Tch. Thinking about going back up made the sword a problem again. There was no way I could swim up carrying this thing.

This time I decided to leave the greatsword stuck in the bottom.

'Is there anything light I can use in its place?'

I swept my mana through the pile of debris on the floor.

I could not sense anything like a sword, but there was something broad and flat.

'Huh? A shield?'

What I had found was a small round shield.

'What is this thing made of?'

I worried it might be heavy, but surprisingly, it was not.

Since I could not find anything else, it seemed I would have to go back up with this shield for now.

I drove the sword into the bottom, grabbed the shield, and started swimming upward.

It seemed to be quite a good shield. If it had once been inside the stone chamber, then it must have been an extremely old object, and it had spent a long time underwater as well, yet it accepted my mana extremely well.

More than that, once I poured mana into it, it seemed to grow even lighter.

Gripping the shield with both hands, I rose toward the surface.